In this blog we discuss Old Testament, women in the church and home, afterlife experiences, and the paranormal. Author, Dust or Dew. Also, see my story on www.coloradowreckchasing.com where I describe the mysterious crash of a UAL crash in 1951 on Crystal Mt. CO.

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Sunday, August 21, 2011

If Clifton Clift, the International Director of MUFON after James Carrion resigned, thought that dismissing Ken Cherry (former State Director of TX) would settle the oncoming ruckus, he was wrong. Rattled by a pattern of unsettling and mystifying events, the insurrection continued.

In Chase Kloetzke’s interview (member since ’96), she described her thrill at being named Star Team Manager for MUFON. She promised her friend Elaine that if she couldn’t be honest and straightforward she would resign. She assured the State Directors that she would not by-pass them, steal cases, or bully their Field Investigators. That made everyone happy. Even after Cherry left, “they had every part of me that was good.” She had an impressive resume of service to the military to prove that she had expertise. Essentially, MUFON was on track.

She and Chuck Reever (former Dir of Investigations, now on the Board of Directors) wrote the Star Team manual, receiving praise from all who saw it. The Star Team Impact Project, paid for with Bigelow funds, was designed to get Investigators to an event site before the press or the curious could annoy the witnesses or muddy the evidence.

The problem was that Bigelow representatives would often get there first without notifying the State Directors and would sometimes discourage the witnesses from talking to MUFON people. Clift admitted that there was no protocol in the contract to deal with the tensions that arose from that situation.

Compromised Cases

Chase claimed that every investigation that she organized was compromised in some way. For instance, when a backyard UFO landing case came in from FL, Chase and Sandy G (Dispatcher) had 2 investigators on their way within 17 minutes. Arriving with a chemist, they interviewed the witness (a man in law enforcement) and took trace samples, sending them to unnamed labs. They had nailed it, and Chase was ecstatic.

Two days later, while the homeowner was away, two men were seen by a neighbor entering his backyard. They torched everything in it. Chase said that the location of the case site had to be compromised by one of 16 people who had access to the CMS reporting system. For this reason, confidentiality is crucial for MUFON to maintain the trust of witnesses.

A case in TX (Stevensville sightings?) was intended to be a training exercise. Before MUFON could get there, unknown persons arrived, took the witness information, and convinced them not to talk to MUFON. Who were the interlopers and how did they know where to go?

In a Georgia case, unknown persons got to the site first and took witness information. The witness was shocked when MUFON investigators showed up, because they thought the first people were from MUFON. Clift claimed that they were from Homeland Security. MUFON reps now carry badges and ID.

James Clarkson relates that during the contract era, there were two separate incidences in which his wife, who was a Field Investigator, was told by witnesses that field representatives of Bigelow got to them first and told them not to talk to MUFON.

Disappearing Cases and Unanswered Questions

Chase began to hear from Dispatchers and State Directors that critical cases were being deleted from the CMS. They would come in late at night, but by morning, they were gone. Elaine Douglass states that when L. G., Star Team Manager for a short time, asked Marie Malzahn about it, her answer was, don’t worry about it, those are probably just military security cases. Larry let it go.

When Chase asked the webmaster about why GPS info for cases was available to anyone on the website, he answered that the coordinates were incorrect. They were just random points within a zip code. Chase wondered, why are they there then if they are not accurate? She let it go.

Elaine Douglass told of a recent email from Morgan Beall to several Star Team people, written on Feb. 6 of this year. It states, “I have observed missing case numbers and bribery. Yes, that is right. I was bribed to hand over personal witness information by BAASS personnel while on the Star Team during the previous project. I was offered a money and a job by BAASS. I declined respectfully and moved on. I reported the incident.”

The Status Today

One might ask, why are they talking about past issues? Clift stated clearly in his interview that all relations with BAASS ended in 2010. However, Chase said something in her interview that would indicate otherwise. She hated the drama that ensued when Chuck Reever resigned and Marie Malzahn took over as Director of Investigations. Today, Marie is listed as the State Director of NV. Suddenly she was on the Board. The State Directors were perplexed as to how that happened to someone from a small state who had not been with MUFON that long.

Suddenly, according to Chase, there were secret agendas, egos, and future projects involving Bigelow and his money. There was horror and angst that James Carrion was going to make a public statement on the radio, that Elaine Douglass started a group called the Committee to Reform MUFON, that Ken Cherry was going to write a tell-all book with Jim Marrs. Chase’s reaction was, “Who cares?” We have 500 cases a month. Let’s just get working on them and it will all turn out OK. All of the above events took place this year.

Notice, “future projects with Bigelow and his money.”

There is one more suggestion in Elaine Douglass’s interview that the BAASS game is still afoot in MUFON. It is unverified but so shocking that I will simply encourage the reader to go to Part 3 of her interview and listen.

During the Clarkson interview, Larry Bryant emailed a wry quip, “Who woulda thunk that MUFON would be run like a corporation… a rico corporation.” A rico business is one that demonstrates a pattern of corruption. Larry later explained that he meant that some in MUFON may be trending toward that kind of behavior. OK, Larry has a strange sense of humor. He didn’t totally mean it. But is there a grain of truth in his tongue-in-cheek comment?

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About Me

Received Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Union Institute & University (Cincinnati) in 2009. Dissertation was published by Wipf & Stock. See amazon.com for Dust or Dew: Immortality in the Ancient Near East and in Psalm 49. Very academic. But, new book, Psalm 49 and the Path to Redemption, published 8-2017, is written at lay level.